May 23, National: Westland Books has announced the release of its latest translation, The Last Bench, written by Adhir Biswas, and translated from the Bengali by V. Ramaswamy. It was the winner of the English Pen Translation Award in 2022. This childhood memoir is also the first title marking the rebranding of Westland’s celebrated languages and translations imprint ‘Eka’ as ‘Ekadā’.
The Last Bench is the memoir of a low-caste boy who came to West Bengal as a refugee from East Pakistan. This is a personal account of nostalgia, displacement, conflict and tragedy, which paints a poignant picture of what it means to be invisible in an unequal society.
Talking about the book, translator V. Ramaswamy said, ‘The Last Bench by Adhir Biswas brings together a trilogy of childhood memoirs in Bangla by a prize-winning writer, written in the author’s signature terse and cryptic prose. It is about the inner world of a village barber’s son, a sensitive child, who discovers the brutal truth of social relations when he joins school, even as his Ma is battling for life. This is a beautiful, poignant and powerfully evocative book.’
Minakshi Thakur, Publisher, Ekadā a, added, ‘The Last Bench, translated from Bengali by award-winning translator V. Ramaswamy, is a childhood memoir by Dalit writer and publisher Adhir Biswas. Adhir Biswas came to West Bengal as a refugee from East Pakistan. In this devastating yet tenderly written account, he revisits his childhood in a lost land. Born into the caste of barbers, he’s continually discriminated against and sent to the back of the class to sit separately. Its profound simplicity compelled us to showcase it.’
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